What pictures are you looking at?

Let me tell you a story that might encourage you to understand that your paradigm determines what you see, irrespective of what you look at.

Two (separate) American shoe manufacturing companies send their top marketing specialists to investigate the market for shoes in Africa. After two weeks both of them reported back to their respective head offices.

The one’s reply read: “Don’t bother to exploit this market, no one in Africa wears shoes.” The other one’s reply read: “You won’t believe what I have found. The most unexplored market in the world. No one here wears shoes yet.

A wise man once said, “Your context gives you the picture to look at. Your paradigm determines what you see.”

No one lives in a vacuum, unaffected by a (certain) context. We all are bound by a certain context where we live, work and play. No two peoples’ contexts are alike, even if they are alike, their paradigms will differ and that will cause them to see their ’similar’ contexts in a different way.